Google Analytics Real Time

I am sure you have all noticed that the internet is getting faster, and I don’t just mean just the page load speed… the speed of change and growth is also increasing. More and more people are developing websites and more and more people are choosing to go online to research and shop instead of going to traditional physical stores.

For all of you that use Google Analytics, I am sure you agree that the tool is great for evaluating past performance of the website and analysing what your users are doing (after the fact), but it isn’t always as fast as you would like it to be. Well, now there is no need to wait any longer! Google has just released a new feature called Google Analytics Real Time, which allows you to set new reports and show what is happening AS IT HAPPENS!

For example, previously if you had posted a comment on Facebook or Tweeted about a new product that had just launched, you would be able to look in Analytics only on the following day or week and to measure the impact it had. But now you can see it all in real time.

A great example of how this new feature can be valuable is in the management of online marketing campaigns. Obviously, when you establish a new campaign you hope the tracking is working properly, but now you can test it and see the data straight away. This will mean that you can be 100% sure that the tracking is working properly before sending your new campaign live to the public.

Overall, this new feature to Google Analytics looks like it will be a killer tool… I hope you all like it as much as I do!

3 Comments

Checked this out last night and it is AWESOME! Should be noted however, that it is not yet available on all accounts. One account I was checking out that had around 10 domains setup didn’t have the feature enabled.

Expect to see it rolling out over the next few weeks/months to more accounts

Yeah real time analytics by GA was rolled out in late September, noticed it on a few of the clients accounts. As Matt said above not on specific accounts at the moment. Still we have seen many paid versions of real time analytics in the market for a long time sorry to say but Google’s offering is pretty limited to what else you can get but oh well it is free hehe…

Hi James,
Thanks for your comment! This feature is starting to get rolled out a lot more now – I’ve noticed it on some of my personal accounts!

Some paid analytics software offer more features and deeper analysis but Google is definitely the best free solution out there. New features such as real-time and flow visualisation charts etc still make it the analytics solution of choice for majority of the market out there.